


Remember Us from that Time

by ssenbonzakuraa



Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28430055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssenbonzakuraa/pseuds/ssenbonzakuraa
Summary: When Jinyoung had left, he hadn't known that running away will not spare him the pain of missing someone. Home is something you miss forever. A decade and a half later, that home pays him a visit.
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Park Jinyoung
Comments: 19
Kudos: 56





	Remember Us from that Time

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bridging the Celestial River](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25681015) by [crudescere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crudescere/pseuds/crudescere). 



_“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”  
_― Anais Nin

“Tell me a story.”

“What kind of story?”

“Just anything,” Jinyoung says. He makes himself comfortable, digs in deeper into the softness of the chaise he’s reclined on. Outside the mellow sun peeps in through the diaphanous cream of the curtains. It irritates his eyes, but there is a comfort in that warmth, so much so, he wants to pull them away to the sides instead of playing this maddening hide and seek. He doesn’t, the chaise is bone meltingly comfortable.

“Are you planning on sleeping again, Jinyoung?” Hakyeon, his therapist, asks in his characteristic airy voice.

“If possible.”

Jinyoung hears a chuckle that dies down into a silence that exists for an impassive moment. He closes his eyes and readies himself for the exasperating sigh that as surely follows.

“Once there was a prince. One destined to inherit a kingdom that spanned from coast to coast. And there was princess, one destined to waste her life away in a tower, thinking her prince would never come.”

“But he did.” Jinyoung cuts him off. If there is derision there, it’s only because he has heard every single version of this story. Only the people change, the places change, the periods change, but it begins and ends the same.

But there is a sense of security in knowing what will follow, how things will turn out, somehow finding footing in an ocean, even when you’re afloat. This is why he likes these stories, takes pleasure in the argument even. It’s an indulgence; putting out an act of hating something even when you have it closely shielded in your heart.

“Obviously.” Hakyeon says.

“It’s unrealistic.” Jinyoung argues. “Do all stories have to have happy endings?”

“Not always.” Hakyeon relents.

“But most of them do.” There’s a pout in his voice he knows, but cannot help but act like a child in front of his cousin.

“Because they’re meant to make you happy, Jinyoung.”

“I don’t feel happy.”

“You’re not supposed to feel happy all the time.”

“Don’t we?” The sun is dimming down outside now; soon the sky will be splashed with reds and oranges and purples, a backdrop of bright burst of colours against the peppering of the birds flying to their nest. It’ll be cold and dark in the wake of the last light.

“I don’t think so, no,” Hakyeon says, “It’s we who tell ourselves that we have to be happy every single moment we’re alive. It’s not our default setting, Jinyoung, nor a goal we have to reach. It’s an unnecessary pressure we put on ourselves, that we have to be constantly happy. Then we blame our stars for not allowing us to be happy. Happiness is a phase, it comes and goes. Just as unhappiness doesn’t last for long, so doesn’t happiness.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Jinyoung scoffs. Though his eyes are closed, he feels them sting. Sadness comes back as surely as the change of seasons.

When Hakyeon speaks next, there’s concern spilling into his voice. “I won’t tell you to be grateful for when happiness comes because it’s not a gift, for we’re not supposed to be grateful for something that is as sure as the spinning of the universe. What I’ll tell you to do, Jinyoung, is to stop counting the days. Don’t count the happy days, don’t count the unhappy days. Stop measuring your life. Just live it.”

∞

The week after, Jinyoung is walking to his favourite café. He likes the walking; just the sensation of his feet hitting the ground, the feeling of the wind on his skin, the rhythm of his breathing.

He’s soaking up the sun like a just-blossomed aster when feels something light and delicate land on his head. It’s a leaf. He stops in his tracks to look at it – a little yellow, a little red, and still a lot green. Another blows past his face, whisked away by the clutch of a chilly wind and lands lightly on the wet shiny pavement where it is already strewn with bright yellows and golds of what was once summer.

He smoothes out the creases and for some inexplicable reason he pockets the leaf, thinks it as some sort of a charm. As if the universe itself had chosen him to bestow a gift upon. It’s a little silly – very silly when he thinks about it – but the feeling had happened upon him suddenly, and though he doesn’t believe in miracles, he doesn’t question it.

Jinyoung sighs, breathe fogging the misty morning. It’s almost his birthday. The cold winds have come early this year. Jinyoung pulls his favourite checked coat tighter around him. It was a gift from his sisters when he was done with his conscription duties. He has his favourite navy and green tartan scarf on too, one that he still hasn’t let go of even when it has been frayed for a long time. It was a gift too.

He smiles and instead of looking at the crumpled leaves on the ground he looks up to the ones the trees have tenaciously held on to. The leaves have turned to rust slowly and gracefully, each hue a sign of the death foretold. Still there is a grace to autumn; there is a warmth to it.

Even when the first few leaves have fallen on the rain washed pavement, there is still contentment in the ones that remain – a little yellow, a little red, still a lot green, and fluttering in the wind that will only pick up with time. Soon the branches will be bare, swaddled in crystalline snow. Then later it’ll teem with new life somehow knowing when to wake up. Jinyoung wishes he were as patient as them. Perhaps that patience comes with knowing what will follow, like one season surely following the other, only varying by a few days each cycle. Perhaps that patience comes from knowing how things will end.

There is a soft jingle as Jinyoung enters. The gentle sound comes with a comfort of familiarity, enough to always tug at the corners of his lips.

Jinyoung orders the same thing every day, content to stand on the line behind hurried customers and bask in the warm, quiet atmosphere. When he had first arrived in Ilsan, Jinyoung had wandered uncertainly into the café, not quite sure what to order on the long list adorning the chalkboard in tired white scrawl. The regular Americano had been a mistake; too bitter, he would definitely never order it again but he hadn’t planned on returning to the café anyway.

Dawdling summer rain had greeted the following day. Too wet for exploring, Jinyoung had decided it was best to take shelter somewhere before heading out again. Sighing under his umbrella, guiltily he decided to go back to the café; he was a little peckish and it was almost lunchtime. The next day it was for sheer convenience and the day after he had been just too tired to venture out. Sooner than Jinyoung had expected, he had built a routine around the comfort and familiarity the place provided.

Each day that went by, Jinyoung found himself more and more attached to the place. The paisley fabric on the old chairs, what was once a rich maroon and gold, faded now from years of use, the calming beige on the walls though peeling in places, the large potted ficus placed by the window; everything became more endearing as time went by. While gradually arranging his life in the new place, sneaking time away for the café hadn’t been difficult. Although it wasn’t quite what he had planned, it was nice to have a place to go to and comforting to have a routine. Perhaps it had been for the best, then, to have found stability, to have found happiness in the strangest of places.

It had made him happy then, uncharacteristically purposeful. Jinyoung is feeling strangely purposeful today. He usually doesn’t after his sessions with Hakyeon _hyung_ , but today feels different as it hasn’t been for a long time, he can tell. Although he’s in a hurry; it is parent-teacher meet at school today. Nothing less than an Americano will suffice for what is waiting for him, so he’s a little miffed that he has to wait in queue, even if he’s only third in line and already the barista is handing the person in front their order. So second. That’s good, he sighs.

The person he stands behind, though they are of almost the same height, is broader than him. For a moment he finds it funny, that the man could walk through the door of this quaint café with those broad shoulders. However, the breeze of humour doesn’t last as long when faint notes of blackberry and bergamot prickle his nose.

How weird it is recognize a smell so acutely. Stranger even when you tend to associate memories with it. When the best days of summer means the cold, sharp edges of blackcurrant, at times offset by roses, as if in relief against that piney, sappy summer leaf. It is so familiar that he’s taken years back to a little apartment that he had once shared between three other boys, three other not yet men. They’d spend all day training at their entertainment company, in a wide wood panelled room, watching their own steps like a hawk on the large mirrored wall. And when they’d come back home, they’d shower and his roommate would always smell like it. His roommate with broad shoulders, a little taller than him.

The man in front of him thanks the barista, and his voice is rich yet melodious, masculine in the way that speaks of formidable softness, and girls flailing. His roommate, his once friend, had the same voice that spoke of the exact similarity in the future.

Before Jinyoung can ask of it to calm, his heart begins to hammer. He feels the disturbance in air as minutely as a prey would with a predator around, the infinitesimal changes in the pressure that he feels in the sudden quietness around him. Time floats around him as it shouldn’t, betraying him now when he had prayed to it for so long to stand still for him. He scratches the inside of his wrist under his watch as he looks at his feet. They should move, they should turn, they should run, but they’re glued to the spot. The man turns, and he feels it before he sees it, before he hears it – the feeling of being hit by a rearing wave.

At first he just looks and looks, heart stuttering. Then the muscles around his mouth move around the word they know from memory, one that he hadn’t uttered for a long time, but they had lovingly remembered, unable to forget.

“Jinyoung,” Jaebeom says. His mouth stutters around the name; the word rough from disuse like a rusted knife. Though Jaebeom questions his fate, he doesn’t question his memory, he doesn’t question his eyes. His eyes know spring when he sees it, knows from the breath that stutters out in relief that it has come.

That spring doesn’t last long when. Not when Jinyoung hurriedly says, “I’m late, I have to go....,” as he runs out of the café. At first Jaebeom is too stumped to respond until he gathers his wits and runs out of the café after him.

“Jinyoung wait...,” he says. His heart beats faster as if it itself has been running. As if it has run and come back home. Just like cranes fly back home in spring.

He isn’t expecting Jinyoung to turn around, much less expecting him to respond, but he does. “I’m late,” he says, and Jaebeom sees the same shock reflected in his eyes.

“You didn’t even get anything...,” he’s just sputtering, he knows. This is not what he wants to ask, this is not what he wants to say.

“I’m late.”

“Take mine...”

“What?”

“Take mine then.” He walks and hands his coffee to Jinyoung who looks at him dumfounded. They’re not strangers, but it feels like they could be. Feels like they have already become one; people who share a history, nothing much. And when Jinyoung turns and walks away, he feels even that history being forgotten.

∞

When Jaebeom goes home, he finds Nora slumbering peacefully on her day bed next to the window. She lets out a wail when he grabs her but relents when he places her on his chest as he sits on the couch. They look at each other for a moment, then like sharing a secret, one that only she will be privy to, he whispers to her: _he has come back; he has come back to me. He has come back to me Nora_. He keeps repeating again and again, though in whispers, as if not wanting to test the fates. And then, too happy, too overwhelmed by the turn of his fortune, Jaebeom lays his head on hers, and he cries. He cries and he cries and he cries.

_“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”  
_― Haruki Murakami

For the next week all Jaebeom does is think. He thinks, because if he doesn’t, he’ll cry. When he’s not crying, he’s laughing and that is even worse. Happiness is a clarion call to misfortune.

When he came back to Seoul that night, he had been too jittery. His parents had asked him to stay back but he hadn’t. In a way it was for the best, if his mother had looked at him, she’d have asked and he’d not have been able to stop the dam from breaking. For now the secret is safe with him and Nora. Not that she has been any kinder, not letting him touch her. And why not, every time he holds her he cries. So in lieu of that he has been thinking.

He doesn’t actively try to think, but he’s a slave to his thoughts. He wakes up to his ceiling asking him what he has been doing all these years about his life, he makes tea and loses himself in the bubbles in the pot; they’re pretty and remind him of Jinyoung’s laughter for some reason. He sits to watch reruns and stares off into the distance, wondering why feet won’t stay still. He tries to work on his lyrics, the words are there, song after song worth of words, but all he comes up with are the shape of Jinyoung’s eyes. It is to be expected that he’d be plagued by the familiar slope of them, the striking doe-like beauty but he hadn’t expected the memories to be so severe. So sudden have they come, Jaebeom doesn’t know what to do with them.

Memory is a strange thing, oddly sentient. Before you can fold it into shape, they turn into pretty little cranes and fly away. You think – you know – they’re safe in the cage of your mind, secure, and you’re happy that you’ll need only whistle and they’ll fly to you. But papers have sharp edges, you touch them wrong and you bleed. And yet somehow, not thinking about Jinyoung feels wrong, that he has him back again and instead of celebrating, all he spends his time in is doing the mundane.

So after a week he decides, he needs to see Jinyoung again. He doesn’t know where he works, doesn’t know his number, and definitely won’t be able to find him even if he tries. He knows he still has Jinyoung’s sisters’ numbers but somehow also knows they won’t tell him Jinyoung’s whereabouts. He decides on calling Jinyoung’s parents instead. He doesn’t know if Jinyoung will even want to see his face again, but it is only the thought of that scarf around Jinyoung’s neck, the tartan scarf he had once gifted Jinyoung, that had looked threadbare now, perhaps from use, that is the only hope he hangs on to.

∞

Standing in front of Jinyoung’s school wouldn’t feel this awkward if he wasn’t acutely aware of all the eyes on him. The parents don’t know who Im Jaebeom is; for all intents and purposes, he’s just a weirdo who definitely doesn’t look like a parent himself. Even then he copes with it; he’ll get to see Jinyoung again if he’s lucky.

Jaebeom sighs a little fog as he takes out his cellphone to check the time. He’s been waiting since mid-morning and it’s apparent in the little rumbles his stomach signals in intervals. The weather is nice, could be nicer. It’s getting cold and it’ll get colder still and it is Jinyoung’s birthday next week and Jinyoung likes scarves.

He is pulled out of thoughts with the school bell going. Jaebeom stops breathing for a second. It isn’t unlike waiting for some tragedy to strike; it isn’t unlike standing on a ship with a wrecked hull, counting the moments until it sinks. With the way his heart thumps inside its cage, it is not the silent shiver of happiness. He can hear the blood in his ears even among the raucous cry of the children. Even then, Jaebeom doesn’t take his eyes off the gates. Jinyoung will come out, and he’ll miss him.

Jaebeom sees him then, in between the sea of faces, like a solitary little aster, white and yellow and glowing among the wilderness. He doesn’t move, feels as if disturbing the air itself might break this illusion, he only looks his fill like he couldn’t that day, wonders if it’ll be the last time. There is nothing anymore, truly, nothing that binds them to each other. Not even friendship that Jinyoung would have to be indebted to.

Then Jaebeom feels a breeze on his face, it is chilly, and Jaebeom wonders if the air is agreeing with his lamenting. But then he looks up and all his doubts are swept away from him, swept away along with the breeze. He finds Jinyoung looking at him from the other side of the road.

No. There is something there, the wind whispers in his ears again. It’s in the way the sun has decided to unfurl through the clouds and blanket them. It’s in the way Jinyoung stands there among the rusted leaves, adorned by a few still falling, knocked out of their branches by the breath of an earth sighing its relief.

∞

“I had an inkling you wouldn’t let it go,” Jinyoung tells him the first thing on crossing the road.

“I’m sorry,” Jaebeom says, a little sheepish. He doesn’t know where they stand, if he even overstepped Jinyoung’s boundaries by coming here. What he did was essentially stalking if you take out the part of him talking to Jinyoung’s parents. He’ll deal with it, he tells himself the next moment. He’ll deal with being called names. This is worth it; this is far more the worth of his inconsequential ego.

“How have you been?” Jinyoung asks as he starts walking.

“I’ve been well,” Jaebeom says catching up. The silence that follows is one of a lost friendship. Where you’d expect it to settle on you like the comfort of a well-worn blanket, it is the prickling inconvenience of a stilted conversation. This is not how they were; this is not who they were. At one point in their shared history they were each other’s confidant, finding each other as sure as the river finds the sea. Those rivers are lost now, something ancient and barren.

But sometimes, sometimes lost rivers flood up again. Time passes, the permafrost melts and a valley blooms. What Jaebeom needs is patience of a snowdrop and the period of a lifetime that he now has at hand.

∞

They walk until they reach that fortuitous café. Jinyoung orders an Americano and Jaebeom a _sikhye._ The seats are plush, he finds, even if a little threadbare. The seating is all rich old wood. The pastries behind the glass are all old-fashioned. Indeed, when he looks around, the café does look a little quaint; the old-world charm continued throughout, down to the crystal glass cloches on the counter. He hadn’t noticed it last time he had come here. He had noticed the chalkboard on the outside and the list contained his nostalgic childhood drink and he hadn’t been able to help himself. Now that he thinks of it, he wouldn’t have stepped foot in this café if not for that. Now that he looks for it, he finds something cryptic in the ring of the coffee stain on their table, there’s old wisdom in the air that makes the plants inside flourish a riotous green, and in the dull beige paint, made mellower by the late sun, he finds magic.

But the magic doesn’t touch Jinyoung. He doesn’t say anything, only looks at his hands. “We...we won a daesang,” Jaebeom says, and then curses himself for saying it.

“I know, I saw,” Jinyoung says smiling and Jaebeom wonders if it would have been better to see him sad than the look of no regret. But Jinyoung isn’t indebted to feel anything he doesn’t want to.

“You still look out for us?”

“It’s a little difficult not when you’re one of the biggest groups in the world.”

Jaebeom smiles, it would have been better if Jinyoung wasn’t the one complimenting and one being complimented too instead.

“It has been a nice run. We’re still going strong. How has it been for you?”

“Could have been nicer.”

Jaebeom looks at the rueful smile on his face.

“Mark got married.”

“I know.”

“Jackson and Bambam have their own companies now,” Jaebeom continues, “Youngjae is an actor now and Yugyeom just came back from service.”

“And you?”

“My songs keep me busy,” Jaebeom smiles into his drink. When he looks up, he finds Jinyoung looking at him cryptically.

“Are you happy?” Jinyoung asks.

“I don’t know.”

Smiling, Jinyoung says, “You’ll get there, Jaebeom.”

Perhaps, Jaebeom thinks it would have been better to speak of happy things instead of the past. Not now when that only reminds him of a loss so immense. A loss of an honorific, spoken as endearment, gifted as an endearment is still a loss, so much so Jaebeom can physically feel it in the frayed ends of a bond that once was.

“What no _hyung_? No Jaebeommie _hyung_ , or _hyungie_?” Jaebeom laughs.

“We’re the same age.”

“You used to call me _hyung_ once.”

_You used to adore me once_ , Jinyoung doesn’t say.

It’s been a while since Jinyoung has seen him in person. Seeing Jaebeom face to face is something he has longed for. For long it had felt like he had already forgotten Jaebeom’s face even if it’s everywhere – on the streets, in the stores, on the internet.

In the old days when the seafarers went out into the oceans with the sky as their guide, they would look at the brightest star in the sky, their north guiding them home. When Jinyoung looked at Jaebeom, looking down at him from the billboards, he didn’t feel like he was being guided anywhere, he was a boat lost in the oceans; oarless, rudderless, sailing where the winds of time took him.

That’s not the only place he sees Jaebeom. There’s a tin box filled with Polaroids in a forgotten corner of his closet. Pictures of them together, pictures of them with their group, pictures of Jaebeom just being Jaebeom. Being friends with Jaebeom had made Jinyoung find himself taking more pictures, even going so far as to buy one of those special cameras, just to suspend time around a moment. There’s dust on the camera now. Hiding in the corner of his room, on the top shelf of a cupboard, the camera sits neglected.

Jaebeom had wanted to stay longer, but Jinyoung had made excuses again and he had gladly let him go. Somehow it had felt bittersweet, that Jaebeom hadn’t insisted, hadn’t pushed like he used to; headbutting through the walls of Jinyoung’s fortress. Even if they had been walking side by side, the space between them could span the universe, and that had only seemed to grow. Where Jinyoung had wanted, wants, to push him away, it pricks that Jaebeom doesn’t press.

When he goes home, the only thing in his mind is finding his old camera. Lifting his body on the tips of his toes to get a better reach at the shelf, his fingers wrap around the strap of it, pulling at it without thinking of any consequences. He rubs at the spot the camera hits him, before placing it with the pictures spread out into a messy pile in front of him. He lowers himself and sits on the ground, crossing his legs and looking at the pictures. 

They’re all faded now. The summer seems to have washed out of them. Looking at them it feels like they belonged to someone else, from a different time that he doesn’t recognise. One picture in particular catches his eye. It was older than the rest. The picture was faded as if it had been under the sun’s rays for a long amount of time. The edges were yellowing, the colour simply drained and it seemed as if the picture had gotten wet at some point. Or it had gone through more than the others. But even through all this, he is still able to tell what the image was. He holds it carefully in his hand in fear of ripping it.

It was his birthday, and Jaebeom had taken him to Everland and they had taken those at a little booth in spite of Jaebeom refusing at first and then indulging Jinyoung. Jinyoung remembers it like it was yesterday. Staring at the picture, lightly running his finger across it to wipe away some of the dust, he can make out their faces, turned away from each other though cheek-to-cheek. When the picture developed a few seconds later, Jaebeom had pulled it out and held it up to him. He was smiling when he had spoken. Jinyoung still remembers his exact words on that day. 

  
  
“Happy Birthday, Jinyoungie.” 

  
  
He acutely remembers the strain in his throat then, feels it now. That had been the first time he felt accepted, cherished, by the one person that had mattered.

Thinking back on any of their memories together, he can only find himself remembering what Jaebeom had said. All of his own reactions and words become irrelevant, only what Jaebeom had said matter. If he were braver, he’d have told him he loved him. He hopes sometimes he had said that to him then.

The picture had slipped out of his hands and was resting on his legs with drops of water on them. He blinks, watching two more drops land on the picture. His face feels hot. After all this time, he still finds himself yearning over who they used to be, even if who they used to be has been made vestigial.

Still, who they used to be exists in a corner of memory, in a line of time, Jaebeom still exists. Jaebeom still matters.

∞

If he had expected for Jaebeom to let go, it doesn’t happen. He comes back the next day, and the day after, then the day after. Jinyoung wonders if he doesn’t have work to do to spare so much time for their meetings. Ilsan is still far from Seoul for a once-friend.

Jaebeom tells him about the production work he’s doing, very proud in the way he has always been about his music. What Jinyoung doesn’t tell him is he has all his songs by heart. One among all of them: a lover’s lament asking the love of his life to come back to him. That had hurt a bit the first time he had listened to it, made him curse himself for going out of his way to buy Jaebeom’s solo album.

Jinyoung wonders how much he should let on. Would Jaebeom listen, will Jaebeom be compassionate about it, would he judge, would he be distracted. He’s offering but Jinyoung doesn’t have anything to give in return anymore.

Jaebeom tells Jinyoung about their comeback, the first one after Yugyeom’s discharge. They’ll be busy then, Jaebeom will be busy then. He’d come visit less, then the visits will grow lesser and then Jinyoung will wonder when another winter comes, looking out through his window at the falling snow, why he had let himself get used to Jaebeom’s visits when he knew it wouldn’t last. When nothing lasts, not even spring.

∞

“It’s a good thing that you’re talking again,” Hakyeon says.

“Next time Jaebeom visits, I’m going to ask him to stop coming,” Jinyoung says.

Hakyeon sighs, “Why? Don’t you think it’s good that you get to meet again?”

“It was so long ago, it feels like a different person, feels like it had happened to someone else. We’re so different now, what will we even talk about?”

“Whatever comes naturally.” But Jinyoung can hear the _you could ask him what went wrong between you both_ loud and clear.

Time turns and things pass. But sometimes even things considered being in a passive state, something akin to grief, something that befriends you like loneliness, can take the shape of the emptiness left by someone dear.

“Only silence comes naturally between us now.”

“You need closure Jinyoung. Don’t let the wound fester anymore. You have to let it go,” Hakyeon says, “It has stayed with you for so long. You need closure so you can get rid of it. It has become parasite that has been growing inside you and you have allowed it, nourished it, and it had flourished. It has grown its roots trough you and made you believe it’s a part of you. You have to rip it out Jinyoung.”

_Rip out the love?_ Jinyoung doesn’t say. He knows there is concern in Hakyeon’s eyes even without looking.

When Hakyeon notices Jinyoung disregarding him, he tries to cajole, “Don’t you want to get to know each other again?”

Knowing is an unreliable narrator, Jinyoung thinks as looks out through the curtains. You have to cut through their layers to say you know them at all. That sort of knowing requires some degree of trust, and loyalty. It’s unnerving, overwhelming even, to risk it. Jinyoung had risked it once and he learned the hard way never to try it again.

“Knowledge comes with the risk of knowing exactly where to hurt,” Jinyoung says.

“Look at it this way, because you’re different people now, you’ll not make the same mistake twice.”

Outside, the day is gloomy. Grey clouds spanning the sky and it’ll only get colder. Maybe he’ll not even have to ask Jaebeom not to come. Maybe Jaebeom won’t be able to come here often. Maybe, Jinyoung thinks, he can try not let things cut him deep this time.

∞

There had been a time when Jinyoung had felt the absence most acutely. The grief had been unable to bear; pinpricks of pain on his chest that left him overwhelmed. When it had become worse, there was nothing he could do but cry over that absence, feeling helpless and yet angry. And somewhere it had been his fault too. Those pictures that he had told himself to get rid of but never truly braved, they had become a constant reminder; like a forgotten tomb of something dead.

Everything Jinyoung did reminded him of those days. He found himself smiling remembering it like a sweet stretch of summer, the whole time that it was only Jinyoung and Jaebeom. That happiness then had immediately turned into something ugly and tarry that dripped down his cheeks, until he had to wipe them to pretend that he wasn’t slowly sinking in that tar pit.

It was a year after he had left. Jinyoung had woken up one night, finding himself on the ground and surrounded by the pictures he had pulled off the shelf. The camera’s strap was tangled around his ankle, the pictures scattered since he had shifted in his sleep. He hadn’t even remembered falling asleep. He had sighed, sitting up on the ground with his back against the bed. He had sat there for a moment, letting the seconds drip away, before crawling onto the bed leaving the camera and pictures where they lay. Wrapping the blankets around himself he had curled into a ball and had stared down at his wrists. He remembers thinking then, maybe if he slept forever he wouldn’t be able to see him, wouldn’t have to see him.

How do you stop missing someone like that? A month? A year? A decade? How much time do you invest to know you’ll stop thinking about them one day? It never happens, not when your souls themselves are intertwined. You try hatred, you try resentment and all you end up with is sorrow. You run away from that feeling and all that time you don’t realize the ghost of regret had been riding on your shoulders. Yet embracing that regret never comes cheap.

Few years back when he had come back from enlistment, he would wander the streets aimlessly. Walk and walk as long as long as his legs gave out. He had figured if he was concentrated in moving his legs, his thoughts would be silenced. It worked the first few times until it didn’t and then he tried walking with his headphones on, volume as high up as his ears could take until even that didn’t.

Now he doesn’t do it anymore, hasn’t for a long time, has learnt to be more patient. Learnt to ask his thoughts to be more patient too. Now Jinyoung walks only to feel the wind on his face, hear the noise in the streets, get bumped by passersby. He exists, that is enough.

His birthday arrives with calls from his parents, calls from his sisters. His colleagues throw him a little party. Jaebeom isn’t there outside the gates and Jinyoung smiles bitterly. This is how it begins. It’s time for him to fortify his walls. He tells himself that everytime he catches himself looking at his cellphone. Jaebeom doesn’t call, there’s not even a text.

It’s Jinyoung who texts him the next day. It’s a simple text and to the point. Jaebeom doesn’t come for the next three days.

∞

It’s a Thursday when they meet next; Jaebeom surprising him outside the school gates. Where he had expected Jaebeom to get angry, get disappointed, he only finds good humour, as if he hadn’t essentially asked Jaebeom to stay away from him.

“I got you something,” Jaebeom says as he fishes out a little bag with an expensive brand name on it. He hands it to Jinyoung and says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t come meet you on your birthday.” And Jinyoung thinks, _Why are you being so kind to me now?_

Jinyoung caresses the soft beige wool of the scarf, not taking his eyes off the pattern of the well known tartan, unable to meet Jaebeom’s eyes.

Growing pains. That is what this is. Even a bud has to face adversity before it can bloom. Jinyoung has to go through this. It hurts, and it will hurt more. But there is nothing to be done about it. He was asleep for so long and now the time has come to grow roots, to soldier through the earth, go onwards and burst through if he wants to see the sun.

“Jinyoung, I think we should make it a once a week thing if you’re busy,” Jaebeom says suddenly.

Jinyoung turns to look, about to correct him that that wasn’t his intention. That he didn’t want Jaebeom to become a permanent fixture in his routine. He wants to say all that, but then he finds Jaebeom looking at him with such childlike expectation. And his eyes have only ever tracked his sun.

“How about Wednesday?” Jaebeom asks.

“I have therapy.”

“Then Thursday?”

“Yeah,” Jinyoung says, breath hitching, “Thursday’s fine.”

When he sees the smile blooming on Jaebeom’s face, Jinyoung hopes, when he’ll look upon this day a year from now, he’ll not look upon it in regret.

∞

Every Thursday after, without fail, Jinyoung finds his old friend waiting near the school gates. The parents must have gotten used to him, because he sees some of them talking to Jaebeom animatedly and when he reaches them, the woman smiles at him knowingly.

“You seemed to have charmed them enough,” Jinyoung says.

“I’m not surprised,” Jaebeom says and when he finds Jinyoung rolling his eyes at him, he amends, “Better than them thinking I’m a pedo.”

They walk to their café, their café now because this is where they always find their legs taking them. Jinyoung orders a latte and Jaebeom a mint-choco shake that Jinyoung sneers at.

The silence is becoming more and more comfortable. Jinyoung doesn’t know what to make of it, but doesn’t question it, just lets it happen. That’s what Hakyeon _hyung_ had told him, let things play out. Let the time flow in the lines it’s supposed to flow in, undisturbed. It’s comforting to stop searching motives, to stop fantasizing his future, to stop thinking for once. That stillness in his head is comforting. The companionship grows comforting too.

“You know,” he hears Jaebeom say, “There are fans who ship us.”

“Please don’t,” Jinyoung throws his head back to laugh, his hands covering his face to hide the blush. It is an old habit come back, this petty arguing. Getting into arguments for the sake of it, smiling through the back and forth of unnecessary quips. A love language that only they can read and write.

“I’m serious,” Jaebeom, the man that he is, doesn’t relent, “They call themselves jjpnators. You know like selenators, they’re jjpnators.”

“Stop, that’s ridiculous.”

“I think it’s cute,” he says to his drink. He doesn’t dare look at Jinyoung when he continues, “Our friendship is just different, that’s all.”

Whatever is between them; whatever is left. No, Jaebeom thinks, whatever is sleeping, waiting to wake up again has to be worthy enough for Jinyoung to endure. But he reminds himself not to expect much. When someone says they love you, you don’t reply it with a too, their love isn’t incumbent on your loving back. Sometimes you just love, without question, without condition, without expectation.

Jaebeom looks at him then, the precious rounded features still stuck in a perennial spring. Sometimes you love with abandon. Sometimes love is like missing, sometimes love is looking at someone smile.

∞

He’s in his studio and the only thing Jaebeom thinks of Jinyoung’s small smile. It feels good, he feels the bone deep exhaustion receding, turning into little flowers that grows inside the cage of his ribs, safe and tucked away from anything that would try to gnaw them out, finding nourishment in his sorrow, siphoning it away to birth instead something beautiful.

He’s working on a new song, and words keep coming, unrelenting flow of words. Song after song strumming through their petals as he breathes. The melody flows too. Song after song coming alive in his head. He hasn’t felt this productive in a long time.

At times it takes his breath away just thinking about it, that he has found Jinyoung again. How many paper cranes do you fold for this good fortune, a thousand, two thousand, how many thousands until you have too many papercuts to not be able to make them anymore. Jaebeom gets flashes of the past years and thanks the heavens for the mercy it has allowed him.

There was a time when he’d run around in his parent’s farm, then came a time when he’d spend his days wanting to be a delinquent and failing, b-boying with some older friends he made because that’s what he had decided to do with his life, and then he became a trainee and it was a cycle of dancing and singing and nothing else. Still it was fun, he had purpose.

Then came a time when just thinking about the things he did for fun, or the things that gave him purpose started to feel like a burden. Things he should do to feel better started to seem exhausting and impossible. Socializing became a daunting task, that constant want to stay cooped up and not want to see another face, becoming strangely and acutely protective of his territory; that had been the worst.

When he came back from the military his first instinct was to isolate himself, but the pressure of the comeback loomed on him and at best he isolated himself emotionally. Some days just getting out of bed had been difficult, withdrawing never helped. But the thought of reaching out, the thought of asking help, never crossed his mind. Or it did, just the person he wanted them from was not around anymore and to anyone else he’d only be a burden. Leaders are made to shoulder the burden of others, he was told, not be a burden themselves.

Mornings were fine; there’s always a schedule waiting. Nothing to remind him of the things stored at the back of his head; those are for the nights. The dead of the night that carried memories that gnawed at him.

There is, however, a big difference between something that is difficult and something that is impossible. The key, Jackson told him once, is to start small and build from there. What’s urgent might seem like a mountain that doesn’t want to be bested, but sometimes you have to climb it; there’s no other way.

Then came the time Jaebeom drew on his reserves, and from the rock bottom he had hit, he had started climbing. Taking the first step is always the hardest, then you take one step after another, do it by rote if not intent and one day you see the fog lifting and you find yourself at the summit. Getting to be with Jinyoung again is akin to climbing a mountain.

For long his heart had been suffocating, like the stifling heat of the summer. The chill has come as a respite even if sometimes it takes his breath away. But some things are worth more than a momentary lapse of breathing. Being with Jinyoung again makes him feel alive. He hasn’t felt alive in a long time.

For years he’s hidden this feeling behind his skin. At first he hadn’t known what it had been, that itch to claw his skin off. It had been tiring to live with it for so long, and not know what it was. It’s only a recent discovery, in that constant need to be with Jinyoung. At least it’s reassuring, he thinks while he’s working on his new song, that Jinyoung hasn’t tired of him, yet.

For the longest time Jaebeom had wanted to throw the burden off his shoulders but now, this burden he wants to take, this doesn’t feel like a burden, this feels like responsibility, it feels like purpose. It feels like a sense of accomplishment, being needed again. He feels resilient again.

Still, there’s that urgency looming on him. The things that require the most urgency are often the things that are the most difficult to do. Jaebeom knows it all too well. He over-thinks, letting his thoughts go off in a tangent and when he looks at the screen of his iPad, there’s not a single word now that makes sense. Everything is a jumble of feelings in scribbles and struck out words. Jinyoung will not like it.

∞

Jinyoung tells him, he has picked up football again; just the small group of his friends who go to the field every Friday evening for a game or two. It’s fun and pleasantly numbing. By the time he goes home, he’s tired enough to only wash and eat and fall into bed. He has also gotten into redecorating his house. He says he wanted a change of scenery.

They’re in the park this time. The sun had come out and they had opted for a walk for a change.

“Tell me a story,” Jinyoung suddenly says.

“About what?” Jaebeom asks.

“About how it was supposed to be.”

“Jinyoung...”

“Tell me.” But Jaebeom cannot do this without sitting down. He nudges Jinyoung to a nearby bench.

He looks at Jinyoung once and begins, “Well for one, you’re still there,” he tries for humour and Jinyoung laughs too. “We are one of the best groups in the country; we have fans all over the world.”

“And?” Jinyoung prompts.

“JJ Project made a comeback and or album became one of the best albums of the decade. I’m a well enough producer and you,” he stops again, his throat closing, “You’re one of the most sought after actor in the industry.”

“What about the others?”

“I didn’t give them much thought.”

He hears Jinyoung chuckle. Probably, he shouldn’t have looked. Jinyoung is looking at the sky and there is a wet track running from the end of his eye through his temple and disappearing into his hair. The question is at the tip of his tongue, he knows he shouldn’t ask. There’s no need to bring up old hurts only to be hurt again, but he has to know.

“Why did you run away?”

Jinyoung doesn’t answer, just keeps looking at the sky. A moment later he says, “I didn’t run away, I left.”

“You left a note and left while we were still practicing. You didn’t even say goodbye.”

“But I left a note.”

Jaebeom knows Jinyoung is being difficult on purpose, but he still needs to know. “Why did you leave?”

“It got too overwhelming for me,” Jinyoung says then turns to him before he asks, “Why didn’t you call?”

They had their differences before, when they were just the two. Then they were seven and there was no time to differ; too worked, too tired, too weighted with responsibilities to even care. Jinyoung had always kept mum; somehow always worried that he had to prove his worth, his place in the team, even if that meant facing the brunt of Jaebeom’s anger. That is what he had distinctly remembered after Jinyoung had left. Those times when Jaebeom hadn’t treated him with the care he was so used to from him. He remembered the person who was supposed to have Jaebeom to lean on at the end of the day, the person who called Jaebeom his best friend, the person who saw Jaebeom drifting away, the person who looked like they had made peace with becoming forgotten. That was his last memory of Jinyoung.

“I was angry and then it was too late,” Jaebeom says.

Jinyoung gives him a rueful smile, “Then what are we doing now?”

Jaebeom knows he deserves it, but it singes all the flowers, he had so lovingly grown, all at once. That Jinyoung doesn’t see a point in them talking again, that hurts somewhere significant. But this he has to bear; this is his penance for not loving Jinyoung enough.

When a relationship buds between two people, it has to be cared for, nourished, it has to be allowed to grow; grow roots, get stronger. A bud dying, never even getting to leaf, its little body withering is such a tragic sight. Maybe you have saved it from yellowing leaves and empty branches tipped with frost. Still, it tells of a tree that wasn’t allowed to bloom.

∞

There was a boy, once. A happy boy; with the smile of blooming aster, catching all the mirth out of the air. That boy is long gone. Instead replaced by something brown and wilting and Jaebeom knows he’s the reason for it.

There is a song he had written. Jinyoung had asked him some time back who it was for and he hadn’t been able to answer. It was too soon.

Jaebeom remembers the words distinctly. The song had been one of his favourite. At that time he hadn’t known why he had written it.

_“Even if it takes a few years I want to find you. That time when you were with me I want to go back, now. So many memories have passed I want to hold your hand again.”_

The song goes, in a soft longing melody.

_“Come back to me Right now.”_

Jaebeom hears himself pleading to someone.

_“Please believe me I won’t lose you.”_

He had promised but in reality he hadn’t even tried.

_“Look back at me. Like back then. Run and throw yourself warmly into my arms.”_

Jaebeom is crying by the end of it.

For long Jaebeom had thought he had forgotten Jinyoung, and he has hated himself for it. At first, he had actively tried not to remember him and then time had stretched them apart, turned a person into a memory. But memory is a cunning thing, hiding in plain sight for as long as it wants, as it laughs at you. Those unsaid things somehow had translated themselves into melodies, wading onwards, always searching for the person they were meant for. Jaebeom, coward that he is, fool that he has always been, never managed to nip them in the bud. They grew and grew until they became uncontainable. 

That first ever time he put pen to paper and decided to put words to his melodies, it had been for Jinyoung. Every song since has been dyed in Jinyoung’s colours, dyed in the colours of his spring. Somehow his subconscious had hidden Jinyoung from him and yet not. Only that, now he sees the brightness of the greens and blues and peaches. Jinyoung is hidden in every song, in every melody he has ever created, in every word he’s ever written. He has never forgotten Jinyoung.

In Jinyoung's eyes he sees a future he thought he could not have, one that was never meant for him, but he wants it. He'll swear by the cruel gods, he wants it. There’s no use mulling over what has been now. The hard part is over.

∞

“We’re having a little dinner on Friday, will you come?” Jaebeom asks.

“I don’t think I should intrude, you’re celebrating your _daesang_.” Jinyoung says.

They’re back in the café again. It’s the first day of snow. When he had woken up, the first thing he had thought of was he had to take Jinyoung out, Thursday or not. When he had driven to Ilsan, he hadn’t been sure if Jinyoung would agree, but he was still counting on his good fortune. Now that he has Jinyoung sitting across him, he feels maybe the snow itself had been the lucky dust that the earth had showered on him. Not that the café itself isn’t lucky enough; Jaebeom has found that the calming interiors are better than being out among too many people. This is more intimate.

“It’s just going to be us.”

“And you’ll be celebrating something I had no part in. It will be a little weird to be among the others.”

“You still have us.” Jaebeom says and Jinyoung remembers long nights of Jaebeom’s vocal lessons with Youngjae, Jaebeom and Mark huddled and speaking in low tones about the fear of the new world, Jaebeom disciplining Yugyeom and Bambam.

Jaebeom and he had been friends for so long; it seemed ages that they had first met. Back then they were the only ones occupying the dorm, before the others had come piling in. Back then they would share every little thing with each other, just the two of them trying to navigate this new world they were sent into to tame it on their own; even though Jaebeom was reticent and Jinyoung didn’t want to worry people around him.

Then things changed over time; Jaebeom’s eyes didn’t search Jinyoung’s anymore. He’d discuss most things with Youngjae – the kid, although only 17 mature way beyond his years. Then Jinyoung and Jaebeom weren’t as tightly bonded to each other as they once were. They spoke lesser every day, unless it was something important that only the two could confer. Whatever he spoke to Jaebeom was always measured, tentative because Jaebeom didn’t share anything with him anymore, never offered. Jaebeom’s conversations of his dreams and hopes then had a new set of ears that weren’t his. Jaebeom who was supposed to be his best friend, with eyes on the verge of tears Jinyoung had supposed then that he still was. Until he wasn’t.

In the end Jinyoung realized there was nothing to fix, that’s just how things turn out sometimes. Fixing is not the point, all he needed was a good listener and the one he wanted to say them to, wasn’t there then.

∞

Yugyeom is the first to cry. He bursts into tears as a baby would when they saw their parent’s face after not seeing them for a time; if a baby can be a thirty one year old, six feet tall man. Before he can second-guess, he goes and pulls Yugyeom into a hug.

The others look shocked, even if they look a little teary eyed. Jaebeom hadn’t told them of him. He supposes Jaebeom meant it to be a surprise but he reconsiders looking at his once second family, if he hasn’t just ruined their dinner. If he’s even welcome now, if he’s even allowed to call them his family. It’s been such a long, long time. Even water of the womb fails to tie people together sometimes.

The dinner goes as well as it could, even if the conversation gets a little stilted, a little guarded. And as more time passes, the more Jinyoung feels the weight of his worth bear down on him. It seems their memories being sifted into two parts – the good ones for Jaebeom and the bad ones for Jinyoung. He endures until he cannot take it anymore and has to excuse himself to the washroom.

It’s Youngjae who accosts himself outside the door. He smiles at him though there is regret in his features. Jinyoung thinks he means well, hopefully won’t tell him off. But what he says is entirely unexpected.

“I’m sorry _hyung_ ,” he begins, almost urgently, and gets into the verge of tears, “You left because of me, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about Youngjae?”

“You left because I took Jaebeom _hyung_ from you.”

And that is the fundamental truth isn’t it. At the core of Jinyoung has always laid a person too selfish when it came to Jaebeom. When he remembers their past, he doesn’t just remember the memories of Jaebeom with the others, he sees his own shape decreasing, he sees himself becoming invisible. He remembers the privilege of becoming jealous, of feeling selfish. Jaebeom was his before he wasn’t anymore, before he became everyone else’s.

He hadn’t expected to be flayed open this easily. He feels his throat closing, he feels himself struggling to breathe. He scratches his wrist and he knows then that he has to leave.

Memory is a wicked thing. He’s feeling what he had been feeling the day he had left the dorm. He has lived through that battle and come out of it with a few scars. And no matter how much he has dwelled in his work, laughed along with his colleagues, those memories have always sneaked up on him; sometimes in the worst possible time. Like now; this moment he’s in, reminding him of his worth.

The scene feels like a déjà vu. It has been only a few months since that fateful day he met Jaebeom in his café. When he had run out and Jaebeom had run after him. It feels like a replay of that day. Only this time, he’s crying like he had wanted to.

It’s cold outside; it has started to snow a little. Even the wind carries the frost with it and Jinyoung thinks this is the end.

“I can’t live like this,” he shouts at Jaebeom and looks at his shoes instead of looking at the man. There are leaves, all yellowed and dirtied strewn on the wet pavement.

He hears footsteps, the scuff of Jaebeom’s shoes on the pavement. One moment he’s shivering and the next he feels Jaebeom’s warmth about to engulf him but he steps back. One step then the next and looks up at him.

“Jinyoung...” Jaebeom pleads.

Jaebeom is distressed too, clueless as ever. Looks like he doesn’t know what has happened, looks like doesn’t know what to do, looks like he cannot salvage whatever was left of their whatever. And that hurts more than anything.

“I ran away because I wanted to be found. Why didn’t you come, _hyung_? Why didn’t you come find me? I was waiting for you.”

His legs will give out if he has to stand here any longer and look at such longing in Jaebeom’s face. He feels the ocean crashing onto his knees; he’ll fall and will never get back up again, not this time.

“Why did I ever meet you,” Jinyoung says and finally breaks down. But the waves have to end somewhere, has to send the battered boat ashore, and surely, Jaebeom’s arms encircle him and Jinyoung finds land again.

Jinyoung allows Jaebeom to hold him, allows him to let Jinyoung cry on his shoulder. He finds Jaebeom is crying too. He smells of roses, it’s so familiar. The unfolding is almost painstaking slow but it is there. A rose that never fully bloomed but never withered either, instead became a soft and dark discernible note that settled against the leafiness of unripe blueberries; as it is with the memory of that summer.

“I want to forget you.....I want to forget you, _hyung_.”

This is what Jaebeom had longed to hear, wasn’t it? Given so sweetly, so preciously, in that adorable lisp of his boyhood; an honorific that wasn’t new to him. He had been called a _hyung_ all through his life but never so sweetly that it had felt like an adoration then, years ago, when they had first met. Perhaps that is why he’s so attached to it.

Perhaps also because he had seen the missing part of himself, when he had looked at a pair of doe eyes and seen a future of a lifetime, when a soft dimpled smile had spoken that endearment and it had given him purpose; an only child, a lonely child. The perennially lonely boy; lonely even surrounded by his friends and bright-eyed, sweet smelling suitors.

Even in the cacophony of the cheers and whistles and adulation of the fans, he still hears the sound of the silence of his thoughts. He has been intimately aware of that loneliness; the loneliness that never truly went away. Though it had for a time; that span of a bright summer of his life when he had met Jinyoung and had felt a sense of belonging after being aimless for so long, had heard the tinkling of every single piece of his soul fitting back together. No, it wasn’t that. It was thunderous realization of the final piece fitting into its rightful place.

But the universe exacts a terrible sum for it. If by the way Jinyoung has been sobbing, the hatred and love both intertwined in a way that you cannot tell one from the other, it seems like the universe has all along been conspiring against him.

For a soulmate to be born, a soul has to die first. It has to be cleaved into two and separated and scattered away by the whims of the cruel gods. That is the pain you carry with yourself an entire lifetime. That aimlessness, never truly belonging to anyone but the one you cannot have.

For the longest time Jinyoung leaving had felt like death; Jinyoung had felt like death. Death doesn't happen to you, death happens to people you leave behind. You only stop existing. Jinyoung had stopped existing for him and what was left was the warmth of a shy smile, the cold winds of his absence, memories and unfulfilled plans. Now that Jaebeom looks at him, that he holds his hands and his fingers brush two scarred lines running parallel, perpendicular to the very prominent veins, he understands Jinyoung has carried that death with him too, for so long.

He caresses Jinyoung’s wrist until he feels Jinyoung pulling away. He waits for Jinyoung to speak but he never meets his eyes. This is ominous; this is foretelling of a tragedy that Jaebeom has written himself. All that time wasted; a decade and a half of misery and longing has brought him to this: watching the other half of soul drift away again.

The night is quiet all around, the pavement has already become wet and they’re showered in gentle flurries of snow. The sky crying and yet being merciful about it. If it was any other day, he’d hold Jinyoung to himself forever, he’d never let go. They’d huddle together and watch the drifting snowflakes descend from the dark fathomless sky and settling like a crisp blanket on the lonely night. But tonight he only sees Jinyoung, his red rimmed eyes, his red nose, his red bitten lips and his neck so delicately swathed by the scarf. There is no comfort in it.

He tries to look his fill until Jinyoung is turning and it feels like an ending. Jaebeom doesn’t like it, doesn’t like seeing Jinyoung walking away like this, watching his back as it gets smaller and smaller, not knowing if he’ll ever find him again, if they’ll find each other again. He only ever remembers them being each other’s shadows.

He was Jinyoung’s before he became everyone else’s. They were each other’s before they were everyone else’s. But there is no consolation for a man like him.

You’re in love and the gods hate you.

∞

You love someone and they may not love you back. You miss someone and they may not miss you back. Promises after promises to himself that he’ll never cry again and that is where he had ended up; sobbing like misery itself on the one person who was the cause of it.

Hakyeon _hyung_ had said to him he needed closure, but it didn’t feel like one. Not like when an incision closes up and it leaves a scar, it was more like bones splintering that never truly healed the same, only to remind you that it exists when the winds turn cold.

As a passing fancy, Jinyoung had thought their story would turn out different. But stories differ when the characters differ. You put the same people in different universes, you get the same outcome. It’s all permutation and combination from what Jinyoung remembers from that one tiresome math paper he had to take in business school. Although, and Jinyoung cannot lie, there could’ve been a different outcome had they been different now, cudgelled by time. He knows he has been, but when he had looked across the pavement, to Jaebeom on the other side, he was in their dorm, those years back. He’s the one who had cared too much and Jaebeom the one who hadn’t cared enough. Now Jinyoung wonders why he was so hung up on it, of the privilege of calling him _hyung_.

You can talk of forgiven pasts, of bright mornings and of new beginnings but you cannot move forward without resolving the past. So much time has passed since then. How do you fill a decade and half of missing? But missing would require Jaebeom having the shape of Jinyoung missing from his life. That empty space doesn’t even exist.

You cannot be too polished; there have to be grooves where someone else's can fit; a perfect complement meant for you before the universe comes back with a vengeance after you to erode the edges and you’re left with someone perfect and polished and completely alone. But those grooves can be remade if one only tries. Jaebeom and he don’t fit anymore. Spring is long gone, even autumn has suffered with his yearning and now the flowers have all been buried beneath the hail. There’s no point in quantifying his life before Jaebeom and the absence after that he carries with him.

You’re drifting in the ocean, oarless, rudderless, and alive only by the whims of the waves. Why, you ask. Why me, you scream and pat comes the reply: because, and you move heaven and earth the rest of your life trying to find what it means. You’re not meant to have what others have and there’s nothing to be done about it. You’re unlucky, though luck has nothing to do with it. There was no lottery when fates were decided.

There is an apology in the sighing of the seas even if it bounds over into the ship. I’m sorry as if it says. This is who I am and this is who you are, I can no more be less tumultuous as you cannot be caught in my tempest. I will quieten when I have to and I will find you land, just hold on. Hold on.

But when a ship gets wrecked by the waves, sometimes the only kind thing you can do is to let it sink. Jinyoung has held on for too long. It’s time to let go.

_“I feel like a part of my soul has loved you since the beginning of everything._  
Maybe we’re from the same star.”  
― Emery Allen

Jinyoung cannot tell if the sky is blanketed with the grey clouds of the past few days or if it is just his sour mood, but regardless he takes his almost defunct umbrella and tucks it firmly under his arm, squeezed against the pea-coat he’s worn these past ten years. His tartan scarf is tied loosely around his neck.

Most mornings, everything outside is damp with dew, overnight frost on the ground. There is a chill in the air accompanied by mist and fog; a dry, sharp, prickly smell of it first thing in the morning, within the first hour of sunrise. Dry, dead leaves crunch beneath his feet and clouds appear when he breathes out. It has taken a few years for Jinyoung to acquire a taste for when winter came in; the melancholy of the days getting shorter and the nights never seeming to end. Whistling winds, roaring winds, heavier rain. Goosebumps raising on bare arms. But now, he likes the cocoon of these nights, the silence of it, the bone deep chill. But winter too is ending.

Every Thursday his conditioned legs take him to the café. Every Thursday without fail, only now he doesn’t have his friend with him. Though Jinyoung wishes he were there, perhaps that’s what it is, he’s been wanting without wanting, consciously, that Jaebeom would come. He doesn’t though but Jinyoung carries that godforsaken hope like a curse.

Thursday comes and he’s back to the café, sitting in one of the wooden chairs and wondering what has become of his life. His wrist itches but he doesn’t scratch it. At one point he lays his head on his folded arms and closes his eyes.

Someone comes and sits across him; their presence large and warm, and the tender smell of bergamot and oakmoss, and, and there is a hint of sandalwood. They smell of familiarity, of promises not kept. They smell of a phantom pain between his ribs and a decade and a half of yearning.

“What are you doing here?” Jinyoung asks.

At first Jaebeom doesn’t answer, prefers instead to look at Jinyoung’s turned face. “Thursday is our day.”

“You missed the last few.” Jinyoung cuts him off.

There is the silence Jinyoung had expected. 

“I was being a coward.”

“And now?”

“I was wondering what I was being a coward for, it’s just you and I.”

Jinyoung turns and looks at him then.

“It’s just us. I reckoned, if I can’t be honest with you, who can I be honest with?”

“After a time even honesty doesn’t work. I don’t have the patience of the gods,” Jinyoung scoffs unkindly.

“Jinyoung I can’t even be honest with God,” Jaebeom smiles wryly, “That place, you should know, I have already given to you.”

Jinyoung looks at Jaebeom and wonders how one can be so in love with another that love and grief becomes difficult to separate.

Grief is like love, and love changes you the same way grief does, following the other as sure as the turn of the seasons. Sometimes you need the distance between each other, or time that seems unending. That is a test, you never asked for it but the fates have their whims, they’ll test you because they want to and you’ll have to bend to their will. And you bend to their will because far in the distance, in a different time, though you cannot see lies the other have of your soul, waiting, wishing, crying for you. The test is to see if you can hold on while time beats you behind your knee, like waves do; and you are, after all, drifting in the sea of time.

Jinyoung wonders perhaps they exist in another life in another time where Jaebeom is his as much as he is Jaebeom’s. Of other realities maybe, two giant stars that orbit each other, cannot be made separate even by the will of the universe. Maybe in a reality where their shapes and forms have changed, but their love begins and ends the same.

Jaebeom has survived the sever year curse. They survived his leaving, they survived six years of conscription, they survived mark’s marriage, they survived Jackson and Bambam’s meteoric rise to fame, they survived Youngjae’s addition of careers. They keep coming back stronger, almost like a grudge against their naysayers. But they will not survive this; they will not survive the questions. The honesty feels like a burden now.

Jinyoung gets up and starts walking out. He’s running away again. This isn’t what he had wanted but it is exactly what he had wanted. It has come too late, he fears. That he has waited so long for it, had cast his hopelessness in resin and it had hardened over time. He doesn’t know what to do with Jaebeom’s confession.

“Jinyoung wait,” Jaebeom calls out.

The sun has come out; it is strange, stranger still that they seem to be always coming back to the same point. Jinyoung wonders if the universe is rewinding itself for them to do the right thing. No, that fortune doesn’t come from folding paper cranes, that fortune come from destiny. Could it be, could it be that if he turns around?

“In hurting you I have hurt myself,” Jaebeom says, “We were made from the same soul Jinyoung, we cannot be separated, we cannot exist like this; you apart from me. You think I forgot about you, I cannot take two steps without taking you with me. You’re always there, in my memories, in my dreams. You’re standing in front of me and I still miss you. I have never stopped missing you.”

Jaebeom keeps looking at him. The same sharp eyes holding the same resolution he had seen once in what feels like another lifetime. He stands there bright and stalwart.

Jinyoung has often looked up in wonder and awe, at the pole star shining like a beacon, guiding a planet full of people to their homes, he has often reached up as the seafarers once had, trying to cage that brilliance in his palm; only that he’s always had his own. Jaebeom has always been shining, brilliant and magnificent. He has been that star, guiding him. Jaebeom has always been his true north.

“Every word I have written it has been for you. Every note has been for you, every song has only ever been for you. Don’t you see Jinyoung, you’re the love story that has never ended. You have suffered enough, we have suffered enough. Come back to me. Come back home.”

The weight of truth when it is said is hard to hold, the weight of this truth, one that has accumulated layers of want and longing and grief is too heavy for Jinyoung. He feels his hand shake even though they’re warm with the rays of sun woven between his fingers. He has waited for so long and now the truth comes to hold his hand.

There in the distance stands Jaebeom. It’s only a few steps between them. If he puts one foot in front of another he’ll fall into Jaebeom’s arm. But those few steps measure a lifetime of distance; a decade and a half of yearning.

He only needs to put one foot in front of the other.

Jinyoung is brave but not as much and in the face of Jaebeom’s honesty that it feels like being bathed by the sun too. His hands shake even more and he forces them into his pockets. His fingers find a leaf, by now it’s crumpled; a little yellow, a little red, and probably brown. Jinyoung looks at Jaebeom again and imagines the bare trees and the sweet cold breeze of that speaks of spring whistling between its branches and brushes against them. Something is changing, the winds have more mercy, the birds have become braver. In between his ribs he feels the pain receding and somewhere in those bare branches, after a long winter, a bud swells under the gentle sun.

∞

_Once upon a time there was a prince; there was also another prince. They fell in love and the gods hated them._

_You’re in love and you’ve found religion. That devotion, that love, was only meant for the gods._

_The Gods wouldn’t have a minute of this ridicule. Who dares to go against the will of the gods, who dares to decide their own fate? So what do they do? They curse the princes to never be together again. To forever wander searching for one another, life after life. Cursed to find each another and wound from the separation._

_The princes come bearing offerings; sacks full of rice and trunks full of gold, they prostrate they plead, they cry and cry and cry to fill an ocean in the skies but the gods don’t relent. A word once uttered cannot be taken back._

_Dejected the princes leave, days flow into one another, seasons come and go, slowly they forget about each other. But happiness makes somewhere between their ribs to smart, and when they’re sad a warmth blossoms in memory. They’re unhappy and the sun and the wind and the earth watch their tragedy unfold. Love is after all an ending; you fall in love and you never love again._

_Unable to bear witness the death of such boundless devotion, the sun and the wind and the earth go to the gods, asking them to reconsider. They were after all primordial beings and their words held weight._

_The gods were angered at first, why would the beings speak for the ephemeral humans. But the beings held on until the gods relented. But words of the gods is sacrosanct, once uttered cannot be taken back. So the gods found a way around it._

_They said the princes will find their way back to each other, in every lifetime, but the beings have to give something in return; a pound of their identity against a pound of altered fate. The beings worried, they were after all wagering their existence for a thing that was so transient in the grandness of the universe. But then the earth said, I am treaded on every day, the air said, I am invisible anyway and the sun said I am eclipsed some days. What did they have to lose?_

_The gods, satisfied with such loyalty, offered them their boon; their humans will be back in their arms, but only when the sun’s light has dimmed, when the air is spurned upon and the earth sleeps, quiet and barren. But love will bloom only when life begins anew. Only when life begins to up._

_How does a bud know when to wake up? When the wind carries the tidings of approaching warmth to the earth, and the earth says wake up, your sun is here._

∞

**Author's Note:**

> I have been in a huge slump lately, it has caused me to drop out of the jjp bigbang (and i'm so ashamed of myself for being so uncreative and lazy ). Thankfully for crudescere's latest fest fic, i got this spark of idea (albeit borrowed) and i just had to work on it. i hope you liked reading it and if you did find any problems with the story or the language, do point it out. ok then <3


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